DDEX1-09 Outlaws of the Iron Route (5e)

Outlaws of the Iron Route

The Iron Route, an important trade road east of Phlan, is beset by competing bandits. An exiled Black Fist officer leads his band of mercenaries turned cloaked ruffians, while a mysterious dragonborn sorcerer commands screaming savages from the north. In this war over the trade route, the beleaguered merchants are the victims, and Phlan suffers from a lack of supplies. It’s up to adventurers to strike out and reopen this vital route.

An iadventure for 1st-4th level characters.

DDEX1-9 5E

Also included in the purchase of this adventure is a version specially converted for use with the Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop software. The converted adventure features all the text and maps from the original adventure along with cross-linking of monsters, spells, magic items, equipment, and story elements, plus the powerful rules automation for which Fantasy Grounds is known.

I ran DDEX01-09 Outlaws of the Iron Route on Sep 23. I’ve been running this adventure periodically since it was first released and Its never lived up to it’s promise. Between the Riot, Grimshackle Prison, Walharrow, the meeting at King’s Pyre, and the Orc raid, four hours is seldom enough time for a group to complete the adventure.

The editing of this adventure leaves a lot to be desired. On first (and second, and third) read, the story is confused, and undirected. This is definitely NOT an adventure that a DM would want to run cold with only a half-hour to skim beforehand.

To run Outlaws as a four hour adventure, replace the Riot and Grimshackle Jail with a mission given directly from Braden Yil working on behalf of House Cadorna. He explains the following;

* Caravans on the Iron Route have been plagued by bandits two groups in particular have been particularly troublesome. The Grey Patriots and The Claws of Tiamat
* In addition to the 100 gp bounty for Sahnd...See more Krulek, the leader of the Grey Patriots, offered by the Lord Regent of Phlan, House Cadrona is willing to pay a 75 gp bounty
* House Cadrona also offers a 75gp bounty for the “Chosen of Tiamat”, the Dragonborn Sorceress Jerala
* If characters wish to bargain with Braden Yil for a richer bounty. One character can attempt a DC 15 Charisma (Persuasion) check. Success will mean they have talked Braden up to 100 gp for each Bandit Leader.
* Information from a recently captured Grey Patriot known as Rahene has revealed the gangs are meeting at a ruin known as King’s Pyre to discuss a truce between them. Both gang leaders will be there in just a day or two.
* Braden Yil will arrange for a boat to ferry the characters to King’s Pyre so they can capture Sahnd Krulek and Jeralla.

The Factions have the following missions for their Agents;
i. The Lords’ Alliance is searching for the necklace named the Heart of Myth Drannor
ii. The Zhentarim wants Sahnd Krulek returned to Phlan alive
iii. The Order of the Gauntlet wants to find a missing group of Agents who were investigating the “Claws of Tiamat”
iv. The Harpers are looking for Sharrak, a Cult of the Dragon spy among the “Claws of Tiamat”
v. The Emerald Enclave wants to rescue the Owlbear companion of a local Druid that was captured by the Claws of Tiamat.
Once the introduction is completed, start the adventure at Part 3. Remember, the characters’ goal, and their rewards for the Adventure all revolve around the events during the truce negotiations and the bounties on Sahnd Krulek and Jeralla. Because the events at King’s Pyre are very fluid, and can react to the characters’ actions, it is important to remind the players of the adventure goal if they get distracted.

Launch Part 4, the Orc Assault either when the tension slows down or as a sudden twist to the climax.

I do enjoy the adventure part at Grimshackle Jail and the fight with Walharrow, but the time needed to do that part of the adventure justice and have enough time remaining for the players to accomplish their goals at Kings Pyre is just too much. If you wish to run Outlaws of the Iron Route as written, including the riot and Grimshackle Jail, schedule 8 hours and take a breather between Parts 2 and 3.
﻿

Barbarossa BJanuary 22, 2016 5:00 am UTC

I highly recommend this mod. There's great handouts, the story is flexible, the author gives advice on how to handle mechanics, and there's many details to expand on. I think I've liked all the mods I've played by author Will Doyle.

Paige LJanuary 15, 2016 2:53 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I have played the free version of this mod and it's great. I've had really great GMs (Chris Steele, I'm lookin' at you!), and they make it obvious that this is a fun adventure.

This was the first 5e adventure I played in back in 2014 at a con, DMed by Rodney Thomson. I've since run it as a DM. Both times its been great. The main scenarios (jail visit, assault on bandit camp) allow great opportunities for roleplaying, comba [...]

A fairly complex adventure for its size, but also very interesting and fits well with the overall Season 1 Phlan storyline. DMing this and DDEX 1-7 and DDEX 1-2 gives a pretty clear explanation to the party of why Phlan's trade is in such dire straits [...]

First time DM. This definitely required a lot of prep work, and we completed it in 5 hours. It was a lot of fun, but pretty challenging for a group of 6 Level 1 characters. Every one had a great time though. [...]

I would recommend giving your players more information about why the bandits must be disbanded and the leader captured as they may ask questions and try to tie him in with a Robin Hood style outlaw. The module does give some information such as rumors [...]

Ran this the other night with a group of 3 and they avoided almost all of the combat and finished in 3 hours. Decided to bust out the wall of the cell at the jail and go down a rope rather than deal with the prison break after just paying off Rathene's [...]

These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.

Original electronic format

These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.